The religion of the Non-Jurors and the early British enlightenment: a study of Henry Dodwell

The article considers the fundamental motivations and associated theological thought of those involved in the Non-Juring schism in the Church of England in the period after the Revolution of 1688. It indicates and exemplifies how that thought is to be related to wider intellectual conflicts of the period, considered as constituting an early phase of Enlightenment/Counter-Enlightenment debate. The works of the leading Non-Juror theologian, Henry Dodwell, and in particular his writings on the destiny of the soul, serve as an area of focus. Extensive reference is also made to the equally prominent Non-Juror, Charles Leslie.     

“Knowledge of divine things”: a study of Hutchinsonianism

The Hutchinsonian movement exercised considerable influence on thought about various topics of importance in England's Enlightenment/Counter-Enlightenment debates. Its epistemological stance, derived from a group of Irish writers of the early eighteenth century, places the movement at the centre of these debates and does much to explain its attraction to contemporaries. The article emphasises the persistence of Hutchinsonian thought and the continuing importance of its epistemological underpinnings into the early nineteenth century, drawing attention particularly to the writings of Bishop William Van Mildert.     

The Nonjurors and the Counter Enlightenment: Some Illustration

The article argues, firstly, that in view of the relationship between Protestantism and the English Enlightenment it is in distinctively non-Protestant religious thought, within or without the Church of England, that the central themes of the English Counter Enlightenment are to be sought. The writings of the Nonjurors can and should therefore be seen as possessing a wider significance than that derived from the history of theology. They constitute an important part of the Enlightenment/Counter Enlightenment debates, and this flows naturally from the position they occupy in relation to the Catholic and Reformation traditions. The study exemplifies this view with reference to the writers of the Usager movement. There is, in the second part, a statement of the fundamental theological causes of the Usager schism. The third part displays the significance of these concerns to the Enlightenment/Counter Enlightenment debates and in particular to the central matter of these debates — the epistemological and institutional location of authority.     

The religion of the Non-Jurors and the early British enlightenment: a study of Henry Dodwell

The article considers the fundamental motivations and associated theological thought of those involved in the Non-Juring schism in the Church of England in the period after the Revolution of 1688. It indicates and exemplifies how that thought is to be related to wider intellectual conflicts of the period, considered as constituting an early phase of Enlightenment/Counter-Enlightenment debate. The works of the leading Non-Juror theologian, Henry Dodwell, and in particular his writings on the destiny of the soul, serve as an area of focus. Extensive reference is also made to the equally prominent Non-Juror, Charles Leslie.     

Did the Teutonic Order create a sacred landscape in thirteenth-century Prussia?

This article defines ‘sacred landscape’ as a combination of factors that the two authoritative chroniclers of the crusades in Prussia, Peter of Dusburg and Nicolaus of Jeroschin, present in their texts. These are the intersection of hierophanies (manifestations of the sacred), martyrdom, relic veneration and pilgrimage activities at specific locations over time: connecting them can account for the Teutonic Order’s role in the sacralisation of Prussia. To map the growth of this concept, the article uses Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in combination with textual analysis, providing a visual and spatial representation of the landscape propagated by the Order. The succeeding period of crusades in the Baltic, namely those against Lithuania in the fourteenth century, shows how the places founded during the thirteenth century functioned as pilgrimage centres for knights going toward the frontier. This article considers to what extent the Teutonic Order’s crusades to Prussia in the thirteenth century created a sacred landscape.     

Finding Antichrist: Apocalypticism in Nineteenth‐Century Catholic England and the Writings of Frederick Faber

The article discusses the apocalyptic beliefs of the nineteenth‐century English Oratorian and devotional writer, Frederick Faber, though initially providing a context among earlier and contemporary English Catholic apocalyptic writers. It proceeds, by means of a consideration of Faber's conscious de‐secularisation of language, to give an account of his identification of the elements of a transvalued contemporary popular concept of modernity as the signs of apocalyptic crisis. The article as a whole is intended to provide an aid to the perception and understanding of a pervasive apocalypticism in nineteenth‐century English‐speaking Catholicism.     

“Knowledge of divine things”: a study of Hutchinsonianism

The Hutchinsonian movement exercised considerable influence on thought about various topics of importance in England's Enlightenment/Counter-Enlightenment debates. Its epistemological stance, derived from a group of Irish writers of the early eighteenth century, places the movement at the centre of these debates and does much to explain its attraction to contemporaries. The article emphasises the persistence of Hutchinsonian thought and the continuing importance of its epistemological underpinnings into the early nineteenth century, drawing attention particularly to the writings of Bishop William Van Mildert.     

Antichrist's Revolution: Some Anglican Apocalypticists in the Age of the French Wars

The article deals with the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century development of early modern English apocalyptic thought which permitted the identification of the Enlightenment and its political manifestations in Revolutionary France with the prophesied Antichrist. The importance of this phenomenon is discussed and a framework for further discussion of it, taken from general theories of apocalyptic, is provided. However, the article is chiefly concerned to go beyond existing, inadequate explanations of the phenomenon, which advert merely to the French wars and certain contemporary conspiracy theories, and seeks its origins and relationships in wider currents of British thought in the period and before. Notably, reference is made to the concern of the insular Counter-Enlightenment with rationalist christological heresy, the continuing vigour of the English tradition of apocalyptic exegesis and to contemporary renewed theological and pastoral emphasis on supernatural and dogmatic religion. However, popular thought is also adverted to and the phenomenon is situated within the history of the ideology of the British ancien régime. Throughout, the normality and acceptability of this apocalyptic thought in its contemporary setting is emphasized, implicitly suggesting a need to restrain historiographical emphasis on modernizing patterns of thought in treatments of the period.